1. Field
The present invention relates generally to data communication, and more specifically to techniques to perform channel estimation and spatial processing in time-division duplexed (TDD) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems.
2. Background
A MIMO system employs multiple (NT) transmit antennas and multiple (NR) receive antennas for data transmission. A MIMO channel formed by the NT transmit and NR receive antennas may be decomposed into NS independent channels, with NS≦min{NT, NR}. Each of the NS independent channels is also referred to as a spatial subchannel or an eigenmode of the MIMO channel and corresponds to a dimension. The MIMO system can provide improved performance (e.g., increased transmission capacity) if the additional dimensionalities created by the multiple transmit and receive antennas are utilized.
In order to transmit data on one or more of the NS eigenmodes of the MIMO channel, it is necessary to perform spatial processing at the receiver and typically also at the transmitter. The data streams transmitted from the NT transmit antennas interfere with each other at the receive antennas. The spatial processing attempts to separate out the data streams at the receiver so that they can be individually recovered.
To perform spatial processing, an accurate estimate of the channel response between the transmitter and receiver is typically required. For a TDD system, the downlink (i.e., forward link) and uplink (i.e., reverse link) between an access point and a user terminal both share the same frequency band. In this case, the downlink and uplink channel responses may be assumed to be reciprocal of one another, after calibration has been performed (as described below) to account for differences in the transmit and receive chains at the access point and user terminal. That is, if H represents the channel response matrix from antenna array A to antenna array B, then a reciprocal channel implies that the coupling from array B to array A is given by HT, where MT denotes the transpose of M.
The channel estimation and spatial processing for a MIMO system typically consume a large portion of the system resources. There is therefore a need in the art for techniques to efficiently perform channel estimation and spatial processing in a TDD MIMO system.